The Fallible Study Bible

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Mark1:35–39

Jesus Prays and Preaches

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Mark 1:35–39 — Jesus Prays and Preaches. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

35

Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out to a solitary place to pray.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

prōi lian ennycha Kai anastas exēlthen kai apēlthen eis erēmon topon kakei prosēucheto

Word by word13 · parsed
πρωῒprōiEarly in the morningG4404
√ πρωΐ — at dawnAdverb
λίανlianwhile it wasG3029
√ λίαν — much (adverbially)Adverb
λίαν: much, exceedingly (adverb) An intensifier, and an uncommon word: the Verifier finds the lexeme in only twelve verses. Mark uses it again, paired with the same adverb of dawn, at the tomb: λίαν πρωΐ (Mark 16:2).
ἔννυχαennychastill darkG1773
√ ἔννυχον — (adverbially) by nightAdverb
ἔννυχον: by night (adverb) The rarest of the three adverbs, and the one that does the damage: it is a plain word for night placed inside a phrase about morning. Our sources do not give its frequency and we do not assert one. It fixes the hour on the wrong side of dawn: the day's first act belongs to no witness. Ellicott calls the note of time “peculiar to St. Mark,” and Barnes harmonizes it with Luke's “when it was day” by placing both at the faint edge of daybreak, so that Mark and Luke are describing the same grey hour from its two ends.
ΚαὶKaiG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ἀναστὰςanastas[Jesus] got upG450
√ ἀνίστημι — to stand up (literal or figurative, transitive or intransitive)VerbAorist Participle ActiveNominative Masculine Singular
ἀνίστημι: to stand up, rise (aorist participle) The ordinary verb for getting off a bed, and also the verb Mark will use for rising from the dead (Mark 16:9). Here it is grammatically subordinate: the rising exists only to serve the going out. The Verifier confirms the lexeme is common (107 verses), so the resonance with the resurrection is Mark's vocabulary, not a signal he plants.
ἐξῆλθενexēlthen[and] went outG1831
√ ἐξέρχομαι — to issue (literally or figuratively)VerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
ἐξέρχομαι: to issue, go out (aorist) Mark will put this same verb on Jesus' own lips in v. 38, first person, as the word for his whole mission (εἰς τοῦτο ἐξῆλθον). The small physical exit from Peter's door and the theological coming-forth are the same word, three verses apart.
καὶkai. . .G2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ἀπῆλθενapēlthen. . .G565
√ ἀπέρχομαι — to go off (iVerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
ἀπέρχομαι: to go off, depart The second departure. Benson reads it as a withdrawal “not only from the multitude, but even from his disciples,” which is what the doubled verb requires.
εἰςeistoG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
ἔρημονerēmona solitaryG2048
√ ἔρημος — desert, desolate, solitary, wildernessAdjectiveAccusative Masculine Singular
ἔρημος: desert, desolate, solitary The adjective that named John's preaching ground and the place of the forty days. Cambridge, quoting Stanley, notes that the lake was “closely surrounded with desert solitudes” lying “close at hand,” so this is geography and not allegory: a real empty hillside minutes from a crowded town. The same word will later be the setting for the feeding of thousands, which keeps the desolate place from meaning only privacy.
τόπονtoponplaceG5117
√ τόπος — a spot (general in space, but limited by occupancyNounAccusative Masculine Singular
τόπος: a spot, place A place defined by what occupies it. Here what occupies it is prayer.
κἀκεῖkakei. . .G2546
√ κἀκεῖ — likewise in that placeConjunction
προσηύχετοprosēuchetoto prayG4336
√ προσεύχομαι — to pray to God, iVerbImperfect Indicative Middle or Passive3rd Person Singular
προσεύχομαι: to pray to God (imperfect middle) The imperfect makes this the sustained state Mark wants recorded, not an incident. Gill, unwilling to blur the natures, says he prayed “as man, to his God and Father,” and guesses at the content (for the disciples he had lately chosen, for strength, for the Gospel's success); JFB admits the content is unrecoverable and says only what he would give “to have been, during the stillness of those grey morning hours, within hearing.” Mark records the fact and withholds the words, and both commentators are honest that the withholding is real.
36

Simon and his companions went to look for Him,

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

kai Simōn kai hoi met’ autou katediōxen auton

Word by word8 · parsed
καὶkaiG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ΣίμωνSimōnSimonG4613
√ Σίμων — Simon (iNounNominative Masculine Singular
Σίμων: Simon Still Simon here, not yet Peter in Mark's narration. He is the first named disciple in the Gospel and, on JFB's account, the source behind it: “Mark, having his information from Peter himself, speaks only of what related directly to him.” That claim about provenance is JFB's tradition-based reasoning, not something the text states.
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
οἱhoihis companionsG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleNominative Masculine Plural
μετ’met’. . .G3326
√ μετά — properly, denoting accompanimentPreposition
αὐτοῦautou. . .G846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive Masculine 3rd Person Singular
κατεδίωξενkatediōxenwent to look forG2614
√ καταδιώκω — to hunt down, iVerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
καταδιώκω: to hunt down, track out A New Testament hapax, and a hard word. Cambridge reports that it “generally implies a hostile intent” and that its good sense appears in the Septuagint at Psalm 23:6, “Thy mercy shall follow me.” The friends do to Jesus what pursuers do to quarry, and Mark chose the verb rather than any of the ordinary words for seeking, which he keeps for the crowd in v. 37 (ζητέω).
αὐτὸνautonHimG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounAccusative Masculine 3rd Person Singular
αὐτός: him The object of the hunt. Luke, as Ellicott and Pulpit both report, adds that they “would have stayed him, that he should not go from them”; Mark leaves the pressure implicit in the verb.
37

and when they found Him, they said, “Everyone is looking for You!”

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

kai heuron auton kai legousin autō hoti Pantes zētousin se

Word by word10 · parsed
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
εὗρονheuronwhen they foundG2147
√ εὑρίσκω — to find (literally or figuratively)VerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
εὑρίσκω: to find The aorist that ends the hunt of v. 36. Mark puts the finding in the past and the speaking in the present, so the sentence hinges from search to confrontation mid-clause.
αὐτὸνautonHimG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounAccusative Masculine 3rd Person Singular
καὶkaiG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
λέγουσινlegousinthey saidG3004
√ λέγω — properly, to "lay" forth, iVerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
λέγω: to lay forth, say (present) Mark's historic present, set immediately beside the aorist εὗρον in the same sentence. The shift is not careless: the finding is reported as past, the speech is put in front of us as if still being said, which is how this Gospel habitually brings dialogue forward. Strong's root sense, to lay forth, suits what follows, since the disciples are not asking a question but laying a case before him.
αὐτῷautō. . .G846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounDative Masculine 3rd Person Singular
ὅτιhotiG3754
√ ὅτι — demonstrative, that (sometimes redundant)Conjunction
ὅτι: that (sometimes redundant) Recitative here, functioning as quotation marks rather than as a word; the interlinear rightly leaves its gloss blank.
ΠάντεςPantesEveryoneG3956
√ πᾶς — all, any, every, the wholeAdjectiveNominative Masculine Plural
πᾶς: all, every, the whole The fronted word of the verse, and the pressure applied to Jesus. Poole, who reads the crowd's motive sharply, says what made them seek him was “either in some a curiosity to see miracles wrought, or at best but a desire of some bodily benefit from him,” and treats the miracles as “a secondary work, subservient to his work in preaching.” The disciples hear a crowd and read opportunity; the next verse shows Jesus reading it differently.
ζητοῦσίνzētousinis looking forG2212
√ ζητέω — to seek (literally or figuratively)VerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Plural
ζητέω: to seek A present tense, ongoing: they are seeking, still. Mark deliberately keeps this ordinary verb of seeking for the crowd and reserves the violent καταδιώκω (v. 36) for the disciples, so that in this scene the friends pursue harder than the town.
σεseYouG4771
√ σύ — thouPersonal / Possessive PronounAccusative 2nd Person Singular
38

But Jesus answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns so I can preach there as well, for that is why I have come.”

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

Kai legei autois Agōmen allachou eis tas echomenas kōmopoleis hina kēryxō ekei kai gar eis touto exēlthon

Word by word17 · parsed
ΚαὶKaiButG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
λέγειlegei[Jesus] answeredG3004
√ λέγω — properly, to "lay" forth, iVerbPresent Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
αὐτοῖςautois. . .G846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounDative Masculine 3rd Person Plural
ἌγωμενAgōmenLet us goG71
√ ἄγω — properly, to leadVerbPresent Subjunctive Active1st Person Plural
ἄγω: properly, to lead (present subjunctive, 1st plural) The first word of the answer, and it is a plural. He does not send them and he does not go alone; the response to being hunted is to enlist the hunters. Cambridge frames the same movement from the other side: “His gracious Presence was not to be confined to Capernaum.”
ἀλλαχοῦallachouonG237
√ ἀλλαχόθεν — from elsewhereAdverb
ἀλλαχόθεν: from elsewhere A rare root (the Verifier finds it in only 2 verses of the Greek New Testament). Its rarity is what makes the pivot audible: the answer to “all are seeking you” is one strange adverb meaning somewhere else.
εἰςeistoG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
τὰςtastheG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Feminine Plural
ἐχομέναςechomenasneighboringG2192
√ ἔχω — to hold (used in very various applications, literally or figuratively, direct or remoteVerbPresent Participle Middle or PassiveAccusative Feminine Plural
ἔχω: to hold (present middle participle) An idiom rather than an adjective: the towns that are holding next to, gripping one another along the shore. Ellicott, Barnes, JFB and Cambridge each reach for hyphenated or approximate English to carry it (neighboring, village-towns, country-towns), which is a sign the Greek picture has no single English word.
κωμοπόλειςkōmopoleistownsG2969
√ κωμόπολις — an unwalled cityNounAccusative Feminine Plural
κωμόπολις: an unwalled city A New Testament hapax. Ellicott and Cambridge agree it occurs only here, and Cambridge names the likely targets, “Dalmanutha, Magdala, Bethsaida, Chorazin.” Gill fills in why such places matter: by Jewish practice a place with ten men at leisure counted as a town and any place with ten Israelites was obliged to provide a house for prayer, so a village-city is precisely a place with a synagogue to preach in. The choice of word is a choice of audience: small places, with a place to speak.
ἵναhinasoG2443
√ ἵνα — compare G3588 (ὁ))Conjunction
κηρύξωkēryxōI can preachG2784
√ κηρύσσω — to herald (as a public crier), especially divine truth (the gospel)VerbAorist Subjunctive Active1st Person Singular
κηρύσσω: to herald, especially divine truth Strong's root sense is the public crier's office, and Ellicott presses it: the word “has here its full significance of ‘proclaiming,’ doing a herald's office.” Poole builds his whole exposition on the verb Jesus did not use: “Our Saviour saith not, Let us go into the next towns, that I may work miracles, but that I may preach there also.” The aorist subjunctive after ἵνα states the purpose simply, without fuss: that I may herald.
ἐκεῖekeithereG1563
√ ἐκεῖ — thereAdverb
καὶkaias wellG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
γὰρgarforG1063
√ γάρ — properly, assigning a reason (used in argument, explanation or intensificationConjunction
εἰςeisthat is whyG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
εἰς: unto, for (purpose) With τοῦτο this is the fronted purpose phrase, “unto this,” placed before the verb for weight.
τοῦτοtouto. . .G3778
√ οὗτος — the he (she or it), iDemonstrative PronounAccusative Neuter Singular
ἐξῆλθονexēlthonI have comeG1831
√ ἐξέρχομαι — to issue (literally or figuratively)VerbAorist Indicative Active1st Person Singular
ἐξέρχομαι: to issue, come forth (aorist, 1st singular) Where the coming-forth began is the one real interpretive fork in this unit. JFB rejects the local readings outright, “not from Capernaum, as De Wette miserably interprets, nor from His privacy in the desert place, as Meyer, no better; but from the Father,” and cites John 16:28; Barnes and Gill read it the same way, from God. Ellicott concedes the sense while doubting the hearers: in this form the words “might refer simply to His leaving Capernaum,” and to the disciples at this stage the coming forth “would be as from His home at Nazareth, not as from the bosom of the Father.” Luke's parallel, which all of them cite, reads “for therefore was I sent.” The Greek here is genuinely capable of both, and the fuller sense is drawn from Luke and John rather than from Mark's clause alone.
39

So He went throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Greek — tap a word ↓

kai ēlthen eis holēn tēn Galilaian kēryssōn eis autōn tas synagōgas kai ekballōn ta daimonia

Word by word15 · parsed
καὶkai[So]G2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ἦλθενēlthenHe wentG2064
√ ἔρχομαι — to come or go (in a great variety of applications, literally and figuratively)VerbAorist Indicative Active3rd Person Singular
ἔρχομαι: to come or go One aorist for an entire circuit. Pulpit draws out what the compression hides: he preached in the synagogues, which “would be on successive sabbaths,” and on Josephus' figures Galilee held upwards of two hundred villages. Weeks of work sit inside this verb.
εἰςeisthroughoutG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
ὅληνholēn. . .G3650
√ ὅλος — "whole" or "all", iAdjectiveAccusative Feminine Singular
τὴνtēnG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Feminine Singular
ΓαλιλαίανGalilaianGalileeG1056
√ Γαλιλαία — Galilæa (iNounAccusative Feminine Singular
κηρύσσωνkēryssōnpreachingG2784
√ κηρύσσω — to herald (as a public crier), especially divine truth (the gospel)VerbPresent Participle ActiveNominative Masculine Singular
κηρύσσω: to herald (present participle) The verb of v. 38 now in action, and in the durative aspect: the heralding is what the journey consists of. This is the answer the unit has been building toward, that the stated purpose of v. 38 is carried out and not adjusted. Benson makes the point sharply: he preached throughout Galilee, “Not drawn from his purpose by the persuasions, however importunate, of his friends.”
εἰςeisinG1519
√ εἰς — to or into (indicating the point reached or entered), of place, time, or (figuratively) purpose (result, etcPreposition
αὐτῶνautōntheirG846
√ αὐτός — the reflexive pronoun self, used (alone or in the comparative G1438 (ἑαυτοῦ)) of the third person , and (with the proper personal pronoun) of the other personsPersonal / Possessive PronounGenitive Masculine 3rd Person Plural
τὰςtasG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Feminine Plural
συναγωγὰςsynagōgassynagoguesG4864
√ συναγωγή — an assemblage of personsNounAccusative Feminine Plural
συναγωγή: an assemblage of persons The word names the gathering before it names the building. Gill notes the practical link to v. 38: the towns chosen were those “in which there were synagogues,” so the itinerary follows the places where Israel was already assembled to hear.
καὶkaiandG2532
√ καί — and, also, even, so then, too, etcConjunction
ἐκβάλλωνekballōndriving outG1544
√ ἐκβάλλω — to eject (literally or figuratively)VerbPresent Participle ActiveNominative Masculine Singular
ἐκβάλλω: to eject, cast out (present participle) Paired with the heralding by a single καί and given the same durative form, so the exorcisms are not a separate ministry but the preaching's accompaniment. Gill takes the pairing at full strength, both spiritual and bodily, “as out of the souls, so out of the bodies of men,” and reads the casting out as confirmation of the doctrine; Poole, on the same logic, calls the miracles “a secondary work, subservient to his work in preaching.”
τὰtaG3588
√ ὁ — the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted, in English idiom)ArticleAccusative Neuter Plural
δαιμόνιαdaimoniademonsG1140
√ δαιμόνιον — a dæmonic beingNounAccusative Neuter Plural
δαιμόνιον: a dæmonic being Mark's ordinary plural for the powers dispossessed as the word goes out. The commentary here is unusually thin: Ellicott and Barnes both simply refer the reader to their notes on Matthew 4:23 and 4:24 rather than treat Mark's clause.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

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AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. Three adverbs before dawn — Mark 1:35

⚙ Mark writes the hour clumsily on purpose: πρωῒ ἔννυχα λίαν, dawn, by night, exceedingly, three adverbs shoved together because one will not do. Ellicott, rendering it “very early, while it was yet night,” observes that “The note of time is peculiar to St. Mark,” and Barnes, harmonizing with Luke's “when it was day,” argues the phrase means not a great while before day but “while there was yet much appearance of night,” so that both evangelists describe the same grey edge of daybreak. Then two verbs of leaving, ἐξῆλθεν and ἀπῆλθεν: out of the house, away from the town. Gill traces both steps, “out of the house of Simon and Andrew, and out of the city of Capernaum, leaving his disciples and friends behind him.” Benson reads the second departure as the harder one, a withdrawal “not only from the multitude, but even from his disciples.” The last verb is the one the English flattens: προσηύχετο is imperfect, and JFB translates it “continued in prayer.” Cambridge, quoting Stanley, keeps the scene physical rather than symbolic, since the lake was “closely surrounded with desert solitudes” lying “close at hand” in the ravines. Poole supplies the reason for the choice of hour and place: “Christ for this chooseth the morning, as the time freest from distractions and company; and a solitary place, as fittest for a secret duty.” What no commentator can supply is the content. Gill guesses at it (for the newly chosen disciples, for strength as man, for the Gospel's success); JFB admits the loss, and only says what he would give “to have been, during the stillness of those grey morning hours, within hearing.” Mark tells us the praying was still going on, and nothing of what was said.

ii. The hunt, and what the crowd wanted — Mark 1:36-37

⚙ The verb in v. 36 is the unit's hardest word. κατεδίωξεν is a New Testament hapax, and Cambridge is blunt about its register: it means “to follow hard upon,” “to pursue closely, to track out,” and “It generally implies a hostile intent.” Pulpit calls it “an ‘earnest pursuing.’” BSB's “went to look for Him” is the one place in this unit where the English is too polite for the Greek. The grammar quietly names the ringleader, since the verb is singular though the subject is plural, and Cambridge sees Simon “already with his earnest impulsiveness beginning to take the lead.” JFB, who holds that “Mark, having his information from Peter himself, speaks only of what related directly to him,” reconstructs the morning at Peter's house with the empty room, and the reconstruction is his, not Mark's. Then the report: Πάντες ζητοῦσίν σε, all at the front of the clause and you, emphatically, at the end, which Pulpit marks. Both Barnes and Gill hear hyperbole, Barnes glossing “That is, many men, or multitudes,” Gill “not all the men in the world.” Ellicott adds from Luke what Mark leaves in the verb, that they “stayed Him that He should not depart from them,” and reads the motive plainly: “They would fain have kept Him at Capernaum.” Poole is the least sentimental about the crowd, judging that what drove them was “either in some a curiosity to see miracles wrought, or at best but a desire of some bodily benefit from him.” ⚙ Note the vocabulary Mark distributes: the crowd merely seeks (ζητέω), the friends hunt (καταδιώκω). In this scene the pressure on Jesus comes from inside the circle.

iii. Elsewhere: the refusal that is a mission — Mark 1:38

⚙ The answer begins with a plural, Ἄγωμεν, so the pursued man's response to being hunted is to take the hunters with him, and its second word is the rare adverb ἀλλαχοῦ, elsewhere, which the Verifier finds in only two verses of the Greek New Testament. JFB notes the textual situation frankly, “or, according to another reading, ‘Let us go elsewhere.’” The destination is a word apparently minted for this coastline: κωμοπόλεις, which Ellicott calls “a compound word, ‘village cities,’” coined “to express the character of such places as Bethsaida, Chorazin, and others,” and which Cambridge and Ellicott agree occurs only here; Cambridge names the likely stops, “Dalmanutha, Magdala, Bethsaida, Chorazin.” Gill supplies the reason such small places qualify at all, citing the rabbinic rule that any place with ten Israelites was obliged to provide a house for prayer, so a village-city is exactly a place with a synagogue. The purpose clause names one activity only, and Poole builds his sharpest paragraph on the omission: “Our Saviour saith not, Let us go into the next towns, that I may work miracles, but that I may preach there also.” Ellicott presses the herald's sense of κηρύξω, “doing a herald's office.” Then the clause the commentators divide over: εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ ἐξῆλθον. JFB will allow no local reading, “not from Capernaum, as De Wette miserably interprets, nor from His privacy in the desert place, as Meyer, no better; but from the Father,” with John 16:28 cited; Barnes and Gill agree it means from God. Ellicott alone keeps the two levels apart: the form of words “might refer simply to His leaving Capernaum,” and the disciples at this stage would hear a coming forth “as from His home at Nazareth, not as from the bosom of the Father.” ⚙ Ellicott is right that Mark's clause alone does not settle it, and the others are right that the verb is the same one Mark used of Jesus' exit three verses earlier, which makes the ambiguity look deliberate rather than accidental.

iv. One aorist for a whole province — Mark 1:39

⚙ Mark compresses the journey into a single verb, ἦλθεν, and hangs two present participles on it, κηρύσσων and ἐκβάλλων, so that the duration lives in the heralding and the casting out rather than in the going. Gill reads the aspect correctly: “he continued preaching the Gospel of the kingdom in one place and another, until he had gone over the whole country.” Pulpit measures what the compression hides, since preaching in synagogues “would be on successive sabbaths,” and Josephus reckons Galilee at upwards of two hundred villages. Benson names the moral of the sequence: he preached throughout Galilee, “Not drawn from his purpose by the persuasions, however importunate, of his friends.” Gill takes the exorcisms as the doctrine's confirmation, cast out “as out of the souls, so out of the bodies of men,” which is consistent with Poole's ranking of miracles as “a secondary work, subservient to his work in preaching.” Henry, whose note covers the whole block from v. 29, leaves the unit its best summary: “Those who have the most business in public, and of the best kind, must yet sometimes be alone with God.” ⚙ It should be said that the commentary on this verse is thin: Ellicott and Barnes both send the reader to Matthew 4:23 and 4:24 instead of treating Mark's clause, and the unit's weight really rests on vv. 35 and 38.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ Offered to be tested. Read the five verses as one sentence about where authority comes from. The day begins with a man alone in an empty place, still praying when the sun catches him; it ends with a province covered. Between them stands a demand, delivered by friends who hunted him down, that he come back and be what a successful town wants. His answer is not a refusal of the crowd but a redirection of the whole enterprise: elsewhere, small places, and one activity, heralding. Mark has just given us a day of miracles; Jesus names preaching as the purpose, and Poole and Ellicott both notice how deliberately he does it. ⚙ Our own reading adds one observation about vocabulary. Mark gives the crowd the ordinary verb for seeking and gives the disciples the violent one, so the hardest pull toward a smaller mission comes from the people closest to it, and it is answered from a place where nobody could reach him. The solitary place is not an escape from the work; it is where the work is decided. The clause that carries the decision, unto this I came forth, uses exactly the verb Mark used four verses earlier for stepping out of a door. We cannot prove from Mark alone that the wider sense is meant, and Ellicott is honest that the disciples could not yet have heard it; but the repetition is there, and the Gospel is written by someone who knew how the sentence ends. If that is right, the order matters more than any single lesson drawn from it: prayer before plan, plan before crowd, and the smallest towns are on the itinerary because the purpose was never the applause of the largest.

The friends hunted him down to make his mission smaller, and he answered them with one rare word: elsewhere.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

λίαν πρωΐ: the early hour in Mark's first day and his last verbal / quotation: confirmed

Mark dates only a handful of moments by the hour, and he uses the same uncommon pair of words for two of them: here, at the start of the Galilean mission, and at the tomb, where the women come λίαν πρωΐ (Mark 16:2). The Verifier confirms the shared lexemes: πρωΐ (G4404) and λίαν (G3029), each found in only twelve verses. Mark 16:9 adds a third link, ἀνίστημι (G450), the verb used here of Jesus getting up from his bed and there of his rising from the dead. ⚙ We do not claim Mark planted the echo. But the vocabulary is his, it is rare, and JFB felt the pull independently when he pictured Peter finding the room “like the sepulchre afterwards, empty!” Both ends of this Gospel begin in the dark with someone already risen and gone.

Mark 16:2 · Mark 16:9

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G4404 πρωΐ (in 12 vv) and G3029 λίαν (in 12 vv) with Mark 16:2, plus G450 ἀνίστημι (in 107 vv) with Mark 16:9. Both rare adverbs, both within Mark, so the verbal link is real; it is an internal echo of vocabulary, not a quotation of one text by another.

Elsewhere: the two verses that use this word verbal / quotation: confirmed

The adverb Jesus answers with in v. 38, ἀλλαχοῦ (G237, “elsewhere”), is one of the rarest words in this unit; the Verifier finds the lexeme in only two verses of the Greek New Testament, the other being John 10:1, where the thief does not enter by the door but climbs in from elsewhere. ⚙ The link is lexical, not thematic in any harmonizing way, and the two uses run opposite: in Mark the shepherd goes elsewhere to seek those who have not heard; in John the intruder comes from elsewhere to take what is not his. We record the shared rarity and decline to build doctrine on it, since a word occurring twice in the canon can carry a coincidence as easily as a design.

John 10:1

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexeme G237 ἀλλαχόθεν / ἀλλαχοῦ (in 2 vv), the rarest possible shared basis, both occurrences in the Greek New Testament. Verbal link confirmed by lexeme identity only; no quotation or allusion is claimed in either direction.

Morning prayer before dawn, as the Psalms keep it structural / thematic: confirmed

The hour is the Psalter's hour. Barnes makes the connection himself and names the texts: “David also thus prayed, Psalm 5:3; Psalm 119:147,” where the psalmist directs his prayer in the morning and rises before the dawning of the morning to cry. Psalm 63:1 seeks God early in a dry and weary land, and Psalm 88:13 sets the prayer before God in the morning. ⚙ The correspondence is of pattern and hour, not of wording: a Greek Gospel and a Hebrew Psalm share no Strong's numbers, so no verbal tier is available here even in principle. What can be said is that Mark's triple adverb places Jesus inside an existing Israelite discipline rather than inventing one, and that Barnes, Poole and Benson all read it that way.

Psalm 5:3 · Psalm 63:1 · Psalm 88:13 · Psalm 119:147

basis: Cross-Testament Greek to Hebrew, so shared Strong's numbers are impossible and no verbal tier can apply. Basis is a shared pattern (prayer before dawn, in solitude) plus named provenance: Barnes cites Psalm 5:3 and Psalm 119:147 at this verse. The Verifier returned no candidate for these pairs, as expected across languages.

Sent to herald: Isaiah 61:1 behind “for unto this I came forth” structural / thematic: confirmed

Jesus grounds the itinerary in a sending, and the commentators reach for Luke's wording, “for therefore was I sent” (so Ellicott, JFB, Barnes). The Old Testament pattern for an anointed figure sent to herald is Isaiah 61:1, where the Spirit anoints the speaker to proclaim good news to the poor and release to the captives, which is recognizably the shape of v. 38 joined to v. 39: heralding, and demons cast out. ⚙ We tier this structural rather than verbal for two reasons. Mark makes no citation, and a Greek text and a Hebrew text cannot share a Strong's lexeme, so the link cannot be confirmed verbally by the Verifier at all. The explicit appeal to Isaiah 61 belongs to Luke's Nazareth scene rather than to Mark, which is precisely why we do not let it govern Mark's clause.

Isaiah 61:1

basis: Cross-Testament Greek to Hebrew: shared Strong's numbers are unavailable, so the tier cannot be verbal. Basis is a shared structure, an anointed messenger sent to proclaim and to release, matched to Mark 1:38 to 39 (κηρύσσω plus ἐκβάλλω). No quotation is claimed in Mark.

“Thy mercy shall follow me”: Cambridge's Septuagint claim about καταδιώκω flagged: verify source

Cambridge, explaining the hapax κατεδίωξεν of v. 36, reports that although the verb “generally implies a hostile intent,” it “occurs in a good sense in the LXX. rendering of Psalm 23:6, ‘Thy mercy shall follow me.’” If that is right, the word Mark uses for the disciples hunting Jesus down is the word the Greek Psalter uses for goodness and mercy pursuing the worshipper. ⚙ We flag rather than confirm this. The claim is about Septuagint vocabulary, which the Verifier, working from Strong's numbers in the Greek and Hebrew canonical texts, cannot check; the chapter number is also given in the commentary's own convention, and the Septuagint numbers this psalm 22. The reading is attractive and we will not assert it: verify the Greek Psalter directly before repeating it.

Psalm 23:6

basis: Basis is one commentator's report (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges) that the Septuagint renders Psalm 23:6 with καταδιώκω. Not verifiable by the Verifier, which compares Strong's lexemes in the canonical Hebrew and Greek texts and not the Septuagint; psalm numbering also differs between the Hebrew and Greek Psalters. Provenance named, claim unconfirmed.

Galilee and “there also”: the region as the place of the sending structural / thematic: confirmed

The unit ends with Jesus covering the whole of Γαλιλαία, and the same region, with the same rare adverb of place, closes the Gospel of Matthew: the risen Christ tells the women that the brothers are to go into Galilee, and there (κἀκεῖ) they will see him. The Verifier records the shared lexemes: κἀκεῖ (G2546, in 10 vv), ἀπέρχομαι (G565) and Γαλιλαία (G1056). ⚙ The link is one of pattern rather than of citation: Galilee is where the heralding begins and where the commission to herald is renewed, and the little word “and there” carries both scenes. We decline the verbal tier because κἀκεῖ is a common connective rather than a distinctive phrase, and because no text is quoting another.

Matthew 28:10

basis: Verifier: shared Greek lexemes G2546 κἀκεῖ (in 10 vv), G565 ἀπέρχομαι (in 116 vv), G1056 Γαλιλαία (in 60 vv). Both Greek, so a verbal tier would be permissible on rarity grounds for κἀκεῖ, but we under-claim: these are connectives and a place name, evidence of a shared pattern (Galilee as the ground of the mission) and not of quotation.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

“For unto this I came forth”: the Son sent from the Father ancient/widely-held

The clause that decides the unit is εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ ἐξῆλθον. JFB refuses to let it mean anything local, “not from Capernaum, as De Wette miserably interprets, nor from His privacy in the desert place, as Meyer, no better; but from the Father,” and appeals to John 16:28, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world.” Barnes reads it identically, “came forth from God, or was sent by God,” and cites the same verse; Gill glosses it “from God his Father, from whom he came forth, and by whom he was sent to preach the Gospel to other cities also.” Ellicott grants the sense from Luke's “for therefore was I sent” while insisting the disciples at this point would have heard only a coming forth from Nazareth. ⚙ Mark's own contribution is the repetition: this is the same verb (G1831) he used four verses earlier for Jesus stepping out of Peter's door. The small departure and the great one are told with one word, and the sentence that joins them makes preaching, not healing, the reason for the mission.

John 16:28 · Luke 4:43 · Isaiah 61:1

The praying Son: the one who intercedes before he preaches ancient/widely-held

Mark's imperfect, which JFB renders “continued in prayer,” shows the incarnate Son sustaining communion with the Father before every advance of the work; JFB lists the pattern from Luke and Mark alike (Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:18, 28, 29; Mark 6:46) and says Jesus “spent some time in special prayer, doubtless with a view to it.” He is careful about where in the story we are: this is not yet the stage of the “strong crying and tears.” Gill guards the natures while affirming the prayer, “as man, to his God and Father,” and guesses its objects, including “the disciples he had lately chosen.” ⚙ Barnes draws the argument the passage invites: “that the Saviour, though perfectly holy, regarded the duty of secret prayer as of great importance,” and “if Jesus prayed, how much more important is it for us!” Read forward, the solitary place is the first of the Gospel's private hours, and the letter to the Hebrews will name the same practice as priestly, a Son who offered up prayers with strong crying and who lives to intercede.

Hebrews 5:7 · Hebrews 7:25 · Luke 5:16 · Mark 6:46

The empty place and the empty tomb novel

JFB, reconstructing the morning at Capernaum, lets one image slip: Peter, “gently coming to see where the Lord lay, he finds it, like the sepulchre afterwards, empty!” ⚙ We extend that observation with the vocabulary behind it and mark the extension as ours. Mark uses ἀνίστημι here for the rising from sleep and again at Mark 16:9 for the rising from the dead; he dates this dawn πρωῒ ἔννυχα λίαν and dates the tomb λίαν πρωΐ (Mark 16:2). Twice in this Gospel people come looking for Jesus before sunrise and find that he has already risen and gone ahead of them, and both times the answer they are given is that he is going on to Galilee to be found there. The figure is genuine but light: Mark states no connection, the lexemes are his ordinary ones, and JFB offers it as a passing comparison rather than a doctrine.

Mark 16:2 · Mark 16:6 · Mark 16:9

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Geneva Study Bible, Marginal Notes (1599)
  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Joseph Benson, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1810s)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)
  • Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

⚙ Honesty notes for Mark 1:35 to 39. Text. There is a real variant at v. 38: JFB records “or, according to another reading, ‘Let us go elsewhere,’” and the text behind our interlinear reads Ἄγωμεν ἀλλαχοῦ, which is that reading. We have built the literal rendering on the interlinear the brief supplies and have not weighed the manuscript evidence, which is outside what this unit was given. Word order. The interlinear indices for v. 35 are arranged to follow the English, so the three adverbs are listed before the opening Καί; our literal follows the Greek order instead, and the note keys still refer to the indices as the brief numbers them. Harmonization. Much of the detail the commentators bring to this scene comes from Luke 4:42 to 43 rather than from Mark: the crowd's presence and its attempt to detain him (Ellicott, JFB, Pulpit), the wording “for therefore was I sent” (Ellicott, JFB, Barnes), and the daybreak timing (Barnes). Each is named to its source above; Mark's own text is sparer than the exposition built on it. Sources. Two of the ten voices are structurally thin here. Matthew Henry's note is written on Mark 1:29 to 39 as a single block and says nothing specific to any one of our five verses, and the Geneva notes supply only a one-line marginal gloss on “next towns”; both are quoted with that noted. Ellicott and Barnes handle v. 39 by cross-reference to Matthew 4:23 to 24 rather than by comment, so the commentary on the closing verse is genuinely sparse, and JFB prints a single note across vv. 38 and 39. Uncertain. Whether ἐξῆλθον in v. 38 reaches past Capernaum to the Father is the one substantive division among our sources: JFB, Barnes and Gill say yes, Ellicott says the disciples could not have heard it so, and Mark's clause taken alone does not settle it. Cambridge's report that the Septuagint uses καταδιώκω at Psalm 23:6 is flagged rather than confirmed, since neither the Septuagint text nor its psalm numbering can be checked by the Verifier used here. The content of the prayer in v. 35 is not recorded; Gill's list of its likely objects is inference, and we have kept it labeled as his.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)